Wednesday 14 September 2016

The Keys of Marinus by Terry Nation, directed by John Gorrie

Serial 'E'
The Keys of Marinus
Written by Terry Nation
Directed by John Gorrie
First Aired: 11th April to 16th May 1964

Episode 1: "The Sea of Death"

Terry Nation returns for his second story in our marathon and, surprisingly, it doesn't feature the Daleks in any capacity. It's not really that surprising given that both The Daleks and The Keys of Marinus were written before the first episode had even aired, but it is odd from a modern perspective.

After all, if Doctor Who had been launched today then you know that the Daleks would be the recurring villains throughout the first season. With The Keys of Marinus, we're given a rare chance to see what else Nation has up his sleeve before Dalekmania begins and his destiny is forever forged.

Following up on the creation of the Daleks with another villain to terrify the kids and fascinate the adults was never going to be an easy challenge. What we end up with was the Voord. When originally thinking about the direction of this episodes review, I was going to defend Nation, placing the blame for the appearance and actions of the Voord on the costume department and the director. However, thinking about it, the faults with this week's villains must be at the script level.

Susan is menaced by a Voord.
Not that the Voord are given much to work with in this particular episode anyway, as they are consigned to skulking about in corners and attacking people at random. It isn't until we finally meet Arbitan, a lonely and tragic figure whose sole purpose is to guard the Great Consciousness of Marinus that we finally learn that the Voord, led by Yartek, intend to find the Keys of Marinus, take over the great machine and rule the entire planet.

Scary stuff indeed, yet Arbitan forces the Doctor and his companions to begin a quest to find the four Keys of Marinus so that he can reset the machine and use the Consciousness to control the minds of the people of Marinus and bring an era of peace. Laudable goals perhaps, but how does that make him any different to Yartek and the Voord. It's good to think that the only reason the Doctor condescends to assist is because Arbitan erects a force field around the TARDIS and prevents them leaving. This presents a bit of a plot-hole, because if Arbitan can project a force-field to stop the travellers escaping, why can't he erect a force-field around his pyramid and keep the Voord out?

Arbitan explains the Consciousness of Marinus.
It'll be interesting to have a story where we have a completely new location each week. Our first step on Marinus is strange and mysterious on paper with it's acid seas, pools, and bizarre pyramids, but unfortunately the budget must have all been blown on Marco Polo, as the realization falls somewhat short throughout. Either with cardboard cutout Voord falling to their deaths, shaky wooden walls, badly choreographed fight scenes, and unforgivably visible stage hands and boom mikes on several occasions. Those of you that have read my reviews from the beginning will know that I often tend to be forgiving of these things, but for me to bring it up with this episode is an indicator of how bad it was.

There are some positives to be taken away from this episode however. Despite the lacking effects throughout the episode, the opening shot of Arbitan's island and the materialization of the TARDIS (the first time we've seen this) were superbly done. The arrival of the Voord submarines are borderline, but despite some claims, I couldn't see the strings pulling them. The regulars have firmly settled into their roles know and have established a good rapport, suggesting that a real family is starting to form. The Doctor admonishing Ian for not having any boots on when he'd just lent them to Susan was a particular highlight.

4/10

Episode 2: "The Velvet Web"

The previous episode ending on the startling cliffhanger of the Doctor, Ian and Susan discovering Barbara's travel dial abandoned outside a building with a hint of blood on it! Quite how Barbara could have got herself in trouble when she had only activated her travel dial about 30 seconds after the others left me sceptical.

Barbara's later explanation that she simply scratched herself while trying to remove the dial during transit is plausible enough. However, the further stretch in credibility comes from the fact that in those 30 seconds she was able to ingratiate herself with Altos and the inhabitants of Morphotron, get changed and sprawl out on a chaise-lounge.

Altos.
The case could be argued that the travel dials could allow the wearers to traverse time, as well as space, but no mention was made of this fact when Arbitan provided the travellers with the dials. Perhaps Barbara has gained some time controlling abilities during her travels with the Doctor. Hell, perhaps this could explain the revelation in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Death of the Doctor that neither Ian nor Barbara had aged since the Sixties.

The idea of aliens using hypnosis or an advanced form of brainwashing via technology to convert others into mindless slaves isn't a new one in the realms of science fiction, and certainly becomes a staple in Doctor Who. However, John Gorrie has succeeded in creating quite a haunting atmosphere to the piece and the juxtaposition of the beautiful and elegant backgrounds, furnishings and clothing witnessed by the Doctor, Susan and Ian is nicely contrasted with Barbara's vision of decayed backgrounds, furnishings and people in rags. Indeed, the best example of this is when Altos shows the Doctor and Ian their ultra-modern and well-equipped laboratory that was "wish", and we're treated to a view of a broom cupboard and the Doctor examining a cracked mug and proclaiming it as a scientific instrument.

The guest characters, Altos and Sabetha, certainly bring up the creepiness stakes in this episode. Altos's soft-spoken RP voice makes for the perfect host for the opening segment of the episode, but there was an edge there. An edge which was perfectly exposed when he realises that the brainwashing machine has failed on Barbara. The shot of him leaning close to her, his unblinking eyes staring straight at her and saying "what's the matter?". Creepy as heck.

Barbara tries to wake up Sabetha.
Sabetha, who turns out to be Arbitan's daughter, is a slave that is on the run from her masters for failing to ensure that Barbara's brainwashing worked. While not having much bearing on the run of the episode, her haunting performance of downtrodden slave with a hint of an internal struggle is enough to make her memorable. Which is fortunate when you can consider that both she and Altos later join the travellers on their quest.

The conclusion of the episode is just as creepy and well-realized as the rest of the episode. Barbara, having been caught by a completely brainwashed Ian, finally confronts the architects of this whole drama: some brains with eyes living in jars. Considering this was made in the mid-1960's, they aren't actually that bad realized, with the soundscape and the effects on the actors voices helping to sell it. The only let down with them being that once Barbara has gone full-on action hero and smashed the place to pieces, the eye-stalk of one of the brains just flops down and it does rob from their effectiveness.

Ian and Barbara face the brains behind the operation.

And so with the city of Morphotron saved from its masters, the former slaves are running amok and tearing the place up. Our travellers, along with Altos and Sabetha, decide to depart for the next location. Unfortunately, the Doctor won't be joining us as he has chosen to look for the fourth key. So, tomorrow we'll have Hartnell in Spain and Susan have the screaming ab-dabs. Could be interesting.

6/10

Episode 3: "The Screaming Jungle"

"The Screaming Jungle" has a lot of preconceptions to overcome following that cliffhanger. The blow that we wouldn't have the Doctor in this episode was quickly followed by Susan have yet another screaming and whining fit in the middle of a jungle.

"The Screaming Susan"

However, by the end of this episode, I feel a little bad for judging Susan. I sometimes forget that Time Lords have telepathic abilities and that she was simply picking up on something that our regulars, Ian and Barbara, as well as our new friends, Sabetha and Altos, can't register.

Her agitated state could even be a good explanation for her overreaction to become snared on a vine. Although, Barbara going at the vine with her shoe gives a strong hint of a parent trying to ward off an imaginary monster from under the bed so that a frightened child could go to sleep. Once again, it feels as if Susan is being written as an eight-year-old, rather than the fifteen-year-old she is meant to be.

Surprisingly, Susan, Altos and Sabetha are quickly dispensed with and the episode moves to focus on Ian and Barbara. With Barbara discovering a false Key of Marinus and having been kidnapped by a molesting statue, Ian sets off to rescue his colleague and nearly gets his head taken off for his trouble. Thankfully, Barbara has been able to maintain her faculties and warn her friend in time, but they are in an entire room full of booby traps.

The molesting statue.
A room full of booby traps wouldn't normally be a trouble for our resourceful school teachers, but they both quickly fall foul of them: Ian stupidly pulling at a pick axe that was attached to something by a chain and Barbara being intrigued by the sudden opening of a creeky door, mooching inside, getting caught in a net and setting off a spike trap!

Their salvation is brought about by a strange old man called Darrius, holder of one of the Keys of Marinus, who set the booby traps to prevent anyone from stealing it. Bizarrely, he informs the travellers that Arbitan would have told anyone he sent about how to avoid the traps, but I don't recall that in the mission briefing during "The Sea of Death". Before we can get any answers from Darrius, he is strangled by a vine and only lives long enough to give a cryptic clue to the teachers about the location of the key.

After some trial and error searching, Barbara manages to locate the key so that they can depart, but not before Ian solves the mystery of why the jungle appears to be quickly overcoming Darrius house and why Susan was affected. It appears that Darrius was a scientist who, presumably bored one day, decided to examine and accelerate the tempo of destruction for the jungle. As you do.

Darrius faces certain death...

In summary then, this was a poor episode in almost all key areas: the story itself is a good example of padding what with false keys and a pointless final riddle; the idea of killer plant-life is definitely unoriginal and will be repeated ad nausea in many, many stories throughout this marathon. The acting fell down in several places too, especially with Edmund Warrick as Darrius. He definitely needed another go at being menaced by the vine, as that was one of the most unconvincing performances I've seen so far.

One area I do have to praise the story on is the set design. The jungle was really well realised, the idol was well done (although the arms let it down slightly) and Darrius' home and laboratory were absolutely gorgeous and atmospheric. It's just a shame we didn't get to see it again.

3/10

Episode 4: "The Snows of Terror"

We've encountered fair few monsters and villains during our journey through Doctor Who so far. They've ranged from the usual grunts working to fulfil someone else's plan, those acting out of fear of the unknown or the usual lunatics. From Quadrigger Stoyn (The Beginning) to the brains of Morphotron ("The Velvet Web"), they've all had a purpose and to some extent, we can identify to why they're acting the way they are.

That is until we meet Vasor, a trapper living in the mountains. Despite the initially unchallenged belief that he single-handedly carried Ian and Barbara down from off of the mountain before they could die from exposure, that air of ruthlessness and cruelty is readily apparent. Even when he is rubbing Barbara's hands to warm them up and stave off frostbite, you get the feeling that he is sizing her up in the same way that a wolf sizes up its prey.

Vasor's cottage.
The discovery that Vasor had previously encountered Susan, Altos and Sabetha as well as taken their possessions in "trade" for food and furs are enough to rouse the suspicious of the two school teachers, yet Ian seems oblivious to the threat that the trapper poses to Barbara. He willingly leaves her alone with Vasor after trading his travel dial for furs and "supplies" as he goes off in search of the others.

Of course once Ian finds Altos tied up on the mountain and discovers that Vasor put raw meat into his bag in order to attract wolves, the science teacher realizes just how foolish he's been and races back, with Altos, to rescue Barbara just as he's about to perform some horrible and despicable act on her. Unfortunately, all of this isn't the first time that Ian is foolish in this episode.

Using Vasor to guide them deep into the mountains where he abandoned Susan and Sabetha, the travellers are all reunited among great hugs, even though they've had to cross a rickety rope bridge to do so. Feeling left out, Ian decides to join the others rather than keeping an eye on the trapper. In typical fashion, Vasor seizes the opportunity and cuts the rope bridge so it falls into the crevasse, stranding the travellers.

Vasor sizes up Barbara over a meal.
As luck would have it, the travellers are just a short walk away from a chamber containing the next Key of Marinus. This time, a bit more ingenuity has been used as the key is trapped in a block of ice surrounded by copper piping and four rather scary knights, similarly frozen, guarding it. The solution to the problem is rather simple, though, as Barbara just turns on a tap and hot water from a volcanic spring slowly melts the ice. Unfortunately, it also thaws out the knights.

Whereas in today's Doctor Who we have a kind of monster choreographer who works with the actors and teaches them how to move, it's fairly evident that this wasn't the case in 1964! The actors are meant to be portraying four knights in heavy armour that have just been woken up from years of being chryogenically frozen. Yet they show no example of this, moving as if they were wearing jeans and t-shirts. Even when one of the knights fall into the crevasse stupidly, the others just catch up, stand at the edge of gaze around stupidly, wandering what has befallen their comrade.

"The Knights that Say 'meh'"

The "knights that say meh" do have one redeeming feature though and that is the way they stab Vasor in the back as he is once again menacing one of the female members of the group, in this case, Susan. A fitting end for a truly reprehensible character.

In summary then, "The Snows of Terror" is a bit of an odd mish-mash. On the one hand, we have a really creepy villain in Vasor that would be right at home in a post-watershed crime drama. On the other hand, we have some campy knights running around like some crappy Monty Python sketch. With that in mind, I can only give this episode...

5/10

Episode 5: "Sentence of Death"

An unconscious Ian.
Having fled from the frozen mountainous regions of Marinus, our travellers now find themselves in the city of Millennius on their quest to retrieve the fourth and final Key of Marinus. Even better, the travel dial appears to have led them directly to it, as Ian is quickly able to find the key in a display cabinet.

A dead body is also lying in the room, yet Ian seems to be more interested in recovering the key. Unfortunately, for the school teacher, the murderer is also in the room and sees fit to knock Ian unconscious, put his finger prints all over the presumed murder weapon and steals the key for good measure. Tarran, the Millennial police officer, or guardian, assigned to investigate the murder is adamant that Ian is guilty of the murder and, unfortunately under Millennial law, he is guilty until proven innocent.

The trial begins.
Chesterton needs a miracle and thankfully it arrives in the form of the Doctor. After two episodes sunning himself in Spain, Hartnell returns and he's in the best form we've ever seen him in. The warmth and good humour that we've occasionally glimpsed in the previous episodes is brought to the fore, with the duplicitous characteristics gone. He is quick to take up Ian's case and goes as far to reassure the younger man and ask him to trust him. From that point on, he's a ball of energy, dishing out the job of studying the laws to Altos and Sabetha, getting Barbara and Susan to act as his investigators and bloodhounds, and staging quite an energetic reconstruction of the murder.

However, the Doctor really comes into his element when he's serving as the defense during Ian's trial. With charm and humility he is able to use his ignorance of advanced Millennial law to post-pone the trial for a couple of days so he can gather evidence. During the second session, his suspicions about the murderer, the location of the missing key, and a little subterfuge with Sabetha is enough to get the culprit to reveal himself: Aidan, the relief guard. Unfortunately, there isn't enough evidence to exonerate Ian of being involved and he is still sentenced to death.

A deceased Aidan and his "distraught" wife, Kala.
Things seem pretty dire for Ian Chesterton, but things aren't looking too good for Susan either. Just after all the hysterics surrounding Aidan's reveal and then his "suicide" in the courtroom, Barbara is called away to take a call: Susan has been kidnapped and if Barbara ever wants to see her alive again, she has to reveal the location of the key!

6/10

Episode 6: "The Keys of Marinus"

The end of the last episode ended on one of the most intense cliffhangers that we've seen on Doctor Who to date. After all, with Ian about to be executed for a murder he didn't commit and Susan kidnapped, presumably by the real murderers, to silence the others, you can't get more intense. Unfortunately, the resolution to this excellent cliffhanger is a little rushed. Throughout this rewatch it truly amazes me that the writers had six or seven episodes to play with, yet manage to pad out the middle episodes with nonsense and then rush the ending. Terry Nation was guilty of this with The Daleks and John Lucarotti was equally as guilty with Marco Polo.

Gripes about the rushed ending aside though, there is still plenty to like in the first half of the episode. The revelation that it was Aidan's wife Kala, along with the prosecutor, who had committed Eprin's murder, Aidan's murder and the kidnap and attempted murder of Susan came as a bit of a surprise. This is Doctor Who's first cold-hearted bitch! How quick she was to weep over her murdered husband in yesterday's episode, play the distressed widow for the benefit of Barbara, Altos and Sabetha and then sneer and taunt Susan when they left. Marvellous.

Yartek's "cunning" disguise.
Once the true murderers were revealed and the Doctor was able to prove he knew where the key was, it was back to Arbitan's island for a final "confrontation" with the Voord and their leader, Yartek. Despite Yartek's best attempt to dress as Arbitan (seriously how do you fit a hood over your headpiece) and Ian is able to rumble him. Rather than risk a violent confrontation, he hands over the fake key the acquired from the jungle and the Consciousness of Marinus is blown sky high. Taking the Voord with it.

At least we end on a happy note as Altos and Sabetha have given in to their feelings for each other and fall helplessly in love. As they leave via travel dial to start a new life in Millennius, I cannot help but wish them well. Despite not contributing much to the overall story, they've been pleasant to have around and went some way to filling the Hartnell void that we had in the third and fourth episodes.

Yartek

The Keys of Marinus has truly been a welcome change of format to the series. We've been spoiled with a new location every week, but unlike Marco Polo where we had deserts, jungles and various way stations, we've had truly alien locations each episode: from strange islands surrounded by acid, to overgrown jungles to snow-capped mountains and advanced cities. To cap it all, we've had a new set of characters to deal with in each episode. All this helps to keep things fresh and interesting, which truly helps with a six-part beast like this.

Looking at the downsides of this story, I cannot help but reiterate the problems that I had with the production and the acting during the first and third episodes in particular. We even had a Voord trip over during episode 6, but I'll gloss over that one as it made me laugh. I'm not the sort of person to bemoan the special effects of a series made over fifty years ago, you can't compare it to the CGI extravaganza's we get today, but I know that Doctor Who was made better than this at the time. Hell, you only have to go back seven weeks.

4/10
The Keys of Marinus average score = 4.67

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